


Signals

by Sheeana



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Mass Effect 1, Multi, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 02:18:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5690887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/pseuds/Sheeana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In between missions, Ashley and Kaidan talk – about choices, and signals, and Shepard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Burning_Nightingale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/gifts).



Ashley found Kaidan at one of the observation ports in a dark corner of the Normandy where most of the crew didn't seem to go. Outside of the whirlwind rush of emotions and adrenaline that had been Eden Prime and a few brief conversations while Shepard slept away her encounter with the beacon, there hadn't been much time for talking. Now that most of the crew was asleep and they were just waiting to arrive at the Citadel, they had nothing but time - and she was curious.

"Trouble sleeping?" she asked, sympathetic, as she leaned against the wall on the opposite site of the window.

"That obvious, huh?" Kaidan asked dryly. He took his eyes off the window for a moment and glanced at her.

"Past midnight, you're not on duty, we're docking at the Citadel at 0500. You tell me, Lieutenant."

He was quiet for awhile, studying the blackness of space as if there was something to see. "Do you ever think you're missing something obvious? Something that's just right under your nose, only you never see it because you're always looking past it."

Ashley barked out a laugh. "That's a bit philosophical for this early in the morning."

"It's just… bugging me. What we saw on Eden Prime. Saren. The beacon. There's something we're missing. Something we're not seeing. And then there's the Commander. Something has her hackles up like I've never seen before."

"And that's why we're going to see the Council."

He was quiet again. Then he met her eyes. "You're right," he said. "I couldn't sleep. That explains why I'm looking out the window alone and getting lost in questions I can't answer. Here's a question you can answer: what are you doing up this late?"

There was no reason not to be honest, so she said, "I was stationed on Eden Prime for awhile. Still getting used to being in space again. It's really... quiet out here. You forget that when you're on the ground." It wasn't like being planetside, where there was always noise. Always people talking, shouting, working. Always the sounds of civilization and mother nature to fill in the silence. It was quiet in space. Peaceful in a way that humankind's supposed paradise wasn't. Not that she would ever think of it like that again. It was more like hell.

"You know," Kaidan said, after he studied her expression, "The coffee on this ship is terrible, but I could use someone to share it with."

"I think I'll take you up on that," she said, grateful.

\---

"You good?" Kaidan asked, as he leaned against the wall near Ashley's extranet terminal. In between missions, he made time to talk to her. Found reasons to stop by when she was working. The same way he made time for Shepard, she'd noticed, who never failed to engage Kaidan in some kind of conversation about his past, their mission, or the nature of life whenever she so much as breathed near his workstation.

"Yeah," she said, leaning back in her chair, "I was just talking to my sister. Letting her know I made it out okay on Feros."

"Telling her about how you're the hero who defeated the geth and saved the whole colony singlehandedly?"

"I don't think Commander Shepard would appreciate me impersonating her. You ever spar with her? That woman can land a punch."

"You know, I never have," Kaidan laughed. "Maybe I'll ask her sometime."

"She's a biotic too, right? You could test each other out."

"Yeah. Yeah, we could."

He looked like he might be uncomfortable and she didn't know him nearly well enough to ask why, so she patted his arm. "Come on. I'll show you the new pistol mods if you want."

"You know," he said, sounding grateful, "I think I might take you up on that."

\---

Three hours after Noveria – after the series of slowly unfolding frozen horrors that was probably always going to be just _Noveria_ in her mind – they were sitting together, picking at meals neither of them had the stomach for.

"Doesn't it bother you?" she said suddenly. She was affording him an awful lot of trust right now, but when someone watched your back on a dozen or so missions, you didn't have much of a choice about trusting them. Besides, Shepard flagrantly encouraged her crew to question her orders. "Doesn't it just- bother you?"

"That's a big question. Doesn't what bother me?" Kaidan asked. 

"Walking away with the Rachni on the loose," she said. "Letting it live so it can go start another war. All due respect but – what the hell was she thinking?"

Kaidan went quiet the way he often did when he was thinking something over, considering the angles. He stared pensively down at his plate. "I think sometimes you have to hope for the best. Think about where we'd be if we never took any risks. If we never went to the moon, never explored Mars. What if we never turned the Mass Relay on? We didn't know what was going to happen, or if it might hurt someone, but we did it anyway. My point is, you can't always know how something's going to turn out. Sometimes you have to just take the risk and see." 

"The rachni almost wiped out the galaxy the first time!"

"Shepard knew that."

And there it was. What was really bothering her. Shepard had made her choice, and everything Ashley had ever believed was screaming at her that it was a bad call while every single thing she knew about Shepard was saying the exact opposite. She didn't know how to reconcile that.

"Hey," Kaidan said. He nudged her hand over the table. "Here's what I know: it wasn't our call. It was her call, and she made it."

"It was her call," Ashley echoed. She kept picking at her meal. 

Kaidan stayed with her, neither of them speaking. The silence between them was starting to feel comfortable.

\---

Shepard was a hurricane, and Shepard was incomprehensible, and Shepard was probably made of the same matter that ignited stars, and Ashley couldn't blame Kaidan for a second for the way he looked at her.

They'd only been on this mission for a few short months. She would have followed Shepard anywhere.

\---

"Ash," she said impulsively, as she ducked out of the way and Kaidan missed a punch.

He recovered, bringing his arms back up. He was a good shot with a pistol and his biotics probably even left geth terrified, but he was no Shepard in the sparring department. They were working on it. "Sorry?"

"My friends and my family call me Ash."

"And you're telling me this because?"

"You know I just thought, I've saved his ass so many times, we must be friends by now."

"Like I haven't saved yours." He lunged for her. She let him have it, and they ended up on the padding she'd laid out on the cargo hold floor.

"I never said that," she said, laughing breathlessly. 

"There was the time when I threw that varren off you on Feros." He rolled off of her, but then just collapsed on the mat beside her. "The time on Ontarom. The time on Nepmos. Did I mention the time I put up that barrier on Luna? Face it, Williams, I've had your back since we started this mission."

There was something in his eyes as he watched her. A kind of intensity, almost the same way he looked at Shepard. It made the hairs on her arms stand up.

She was flushed and still running on adrenaline, and so she wasn't thinking entirely straight when she said, "Okay, Alenko, be honest here: these are some mixed signals you've been sending off for awhile now. I just want to make sure I'm reading them right before I go and do something stupid."

"No," he said, without any hesitation, "I think you're… reading them right."

"That what Shepard said, too?"

"Something like that. Did I hear you were quoting poetry at her?" he shot back. "Because Vakarian said he overheard-"

"Oh, don't you even-"

"Don't worry about it, Ash. I'm not going to be the pot calling the kettle black here."

"She's just… Shepard," Ashley said. She wasn't even embarrassed about it.

Like usual, Kaidan was quiet for awhile. "I think she's open to it," he said finally. "Sometimes it's hard to tell with her."

"Wait a minute. You _asked_ her?"

"I may have alluded. Suggested. Implied."

She almost spluttered, but made a quick recovery. "You really think that's a good idea? Saren's still out there, and this is how you want us to spend our time?"

"A little bit of fun and relaxation during downtime never hurt anyone. And who knows what's coming. This might be all the time we get."

She hopped back up to her feet. "I'll think about it," she called over her shoulder, as she headed off to hit the showers before the rest of the crew woke up.

\---

Catching Shepard alone was easier said than done. If she wasn't talking to Pressly about their next destination, she was in the cockpit with Joker. If she wasn't trading barbs with Joker, she was trading war stories with Wrex. Or talking to Vakarian. Or Tali. Or Adams. Or just checking that all her shotgun mods were properly installed.

In the end, it was Shepard who cornered them.

"Look what we have here. Williams," Shepard said pleasantly. "Alenko."

Ashley cleared her throat, and wondered why their brilliant plan to get her alone and casually bring it up suddenly didn't seem so brilliant after all. "Commander Shepard."

"I heard you two have been looking for me?"

"Word sure gets around fast on this ship," said Ashley.

"There _was_ something we wanted to discuss," Kaidan said, "About… what I mentioned earlier, when we were talking about you and me and... going off the book? You remember."

"I remember. I think I'm starting to understand the poetry, too," Shepard said dryly. "How long have you two been talking behind my back?"

"Just wanted to make sure I was reading the signals right," Ashley said. She stood stock still, almost to attention. She refused to fidget. She was made of sterner stuff than that.

"Sure are a lot of misplaced signals going around on this ship. Alenko seems to be having trouble with them too."

Ashley gulped. She wanted to call it something else, but she couldn't. "Pardon me, ma'am-"

"No, Williams, I'd say you're doing just fine."

She recovered admirably, she thought. "If you say so, skipper."

"We're heading out again tomorrow. Can I expect to see both of you in my quarters tonight? If… you're comfortable. That's not an order. More like an invitation." Ashley could have sworn Shepard's cheeks colored.

"We'll… see you tonight," she said, tentative. She blinked to check that this was real and she wasn't hallucinating after a long night of shore leave at Flux.

"Carry on." Shepard gave them both a nod and walked away, as if they'd just stopped to say hi and now she had somewhere more important to be. Which she probably did.

The look Kaidan gave Ashley made her wish for biotics to shove him with.

\---

"Williams," Shepard greeted wryly for the second time in a day. "Alenko."

"Ma'am," Ashley replied, with just the right amount of cheekiness in her tone.

"Ma'am," Kaidan said. He mimicked her so perfectly, it must have looked like they'd rehearsed it - although maybe that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

"I think we can dispense with the 'ma'am' for tonight," said Shepard.

"Then it's Ash. If that's all right, _ma'am_."

"Okay, Ash." Shepard moved away from the door, and it closed. They were left standing there in the center of her quarters, all three of them waiting for someone to break cover.

To Ashley's surprise, Kaidan was the one who stepped forward and kissed Shepard first. There was no hesitation there, like he'd been thinking about it for so long he couldn't stand it anymore. Ashley's eyebrows shot right up, but she didn't look away. Didn't want to look away. If the air around the two of them crackled with biotic energy, she pretended not to notice.

"Do I get a turn?" she asked. Her mouth had gone dry. She licked her lips and hoped it wasn't noticeable. All thoughts of reciting poetry to lighten or enhance the mood escaped from her mind.

Yeah, she found out very soon, when Kaidan's hand was on her shoulder and Shepard had backed her up against the wall with all the fire and sunlight in her eyes that she usually reserved for her worst enemies, she got a turn. 

It was worth all the awkward corridor encounters she could imagine.

\---

"I could do that again," Kaidan remarked, when they were all lying together in the darkened near-silence of Shepard's cabin.

"You don't have to tell me," Ashley said, with a wry smile to match her tone. Lazily, she draped an arm over Shepard's waist.

Shepard sat up against her arm. The expression on her face had left enemy soldiers trembling in the dust. "If you two are the type to keep me up all night talking, know there will be hell to pay in the morning."

"Yes, ma'am," Ashley teased.


End file.
